| Constellation Research

Capgemini Expands Its Digital Growth Strategy With The Acquisition of oinio, a Leading European Salesforce Partner

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Role: Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on the IOT of Customer Experience and how the cloud is driving more flexible, agile, and robust customer service and customer experiences. In-app or in device customer service is the future. Coverage Areas: Next Generation Customer, Digital Marketing Transformation Bio: As a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, Petouhoff works with Fortune 100 and 500’s Senior Leadership teams to create strategic customer experience (marketing, sales and service) solutions which engage customers, build brands and grow businesses. Combining her experience as a former Forrester software analyst, PWC systems integrator and change management consultant, Petouhoff leads executive workshops to discuss to not only…...

Capgemini and onio: Capgemini announced the acquisition of oinio, one of Europe’s leading Salesforce partners. This acquisition will expand Capgemini’s Digital Strategy Group growth by augmenting Capgemini’s capabilities in providing digital transformation services around the Salesforce solutions and platform across Europe and Asia. Oinio, based in Munich, has become one of the major European players in the consulting and deployment of Salesforce cloud-based CRM and digital marketing solutions. Oonia has more than 600 projects for a portfolio of international clients in life sciences, manufacturing, financial services, high tech and utilities.

Statements from the Executives on The Acquisition: Maic Stohr, CEO of oinio commented, “As part of Capgemini, a global leader in digital business transformation, we’ll be able to offer Salesforce based agile innovation to enterprise customers at scale, to drive quicker business outcomes. It’s a commitment to our customers, our team and to the digital era.”

Dennis Flüchter, COO and CFO of oinio, said, “Joining Capgemini with its worldwide reach is an opportunity to accelerate our growth in Germany and on a global basis too. We’re proud to become part of the Capgemini family.”

And Jean Lassignardie, Corporate Vice President and Group Head of Salesforce Expert and Transformation Services at Capgemini stated, “The recognized expertise of oinio will allow us to reinforce our position in the European and Asian markets, while strengthening our partnership with Salesforce globally. Together, we will be able to quickly deploy the most innovative solutions to support our customers in their business transformation and growth acceleration.”

What Does This Mean? What I find interesting about this acquisition is the pace at which the foreign markets are understanding the value of digital transformation. This type of acquisition clearly shows that both Capgemini and oinio are seeing the desire and need for consulting services in the digital transformation area. System integrators of yesteryear were known for implementing large, on-premise solutions, taking years to implement, many of which were given up on.

Today, system integrators have had to reinvent themselves as the advent of SaaS / cloud solutions replacing the on-premise projects. But smart systems integrators have become trusted advisors in the role of aiding digital transformation. Because there is so much about a business that has to be transformed, in reality there is a huge market for systems integrators that realize that the transition from the old way of doing business, to truly being digital requires a transformation of people, process, leadership and technology. And there is no shortage of actual work that has to get done to make that all happen.

The future? Look to see which systems integrators are understanding what digital transformation means and who is leading companies to transform their culture, the mindset, their leadership, their workforce, their processes (how work gets done and how customers are interacted with and engaged) and what technologies are chosen to make this a reality in the short term. The longer companies wait to take on this type of endeavor, the more danger they put themselves in becoming extinct, i.e., irrelevant to their customers and unfortunately, for some really great brands, the certainty of going out of business.

@DrNatalie VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Covering Customer-facing Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Strategies and Technologies and System Integrators

Next-Generation Customer Experience capgemini salesforce Chief Customer Officer

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#IOT CES 2016: Expect Everything That Can Be Connected Will Be Connected

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

CES: The Connected Internet of Things Dominates: Analysts predict by 2019 that only 49 percent of data in the cloud will be from PCs, and the biggest drivers of the shift will be smartphones and IoT. They also expect the Industrial Internet (another euphemism for the Internet of Things) to generate over 500 zettabytes in 2019 — 49 times current cloud traffic. Big data? More like huge, vast, gigantic, massive, colossal, and maybe even titanic amounts of data. So yes, lot’s of it and the key is how to use it to make a customer experience – whether B2C or B2B – better. But will all that data help? It could — if we learn how to harness it. And we help translate what the data scientist know so well to the business people that need to use it to make better customer experiences in marketing, sales and customer service. I just hope things don’t get lost in translation.

My POV on #IOT? I’m not really that interested in the machine to machine part of #IOT. It’s not really my area of expertise how machines talk to machines. I am however, very interested in the experiences that are created when “things” get connected to other “things.” Will these connected machines make better experiences or will they just make more data? What does history tell us about our use of technology?

Our Connection to Tools and Data, Prehistoric and Historic: Our connection to tools, think stone spears and our partnerships with tools predates history. History is the study of the past using written records. Anything prior to the first written accounts of history is termed prehistory (meaning “before history”), including earlier technologies and tools. About 2.5 million years before writing was developed, technology began with the earliest of humans using stone tools to start fires, hunt, cut food, and bury their dead. These were basic materials and resulted in the first tools or technology. Screen Shot 2016-01-05 at 11.30.49 AM

If you don’t already know this, my engineering degrees are in material science and metallurgy. Why mention this you ask? Well because in archaeology and physical anthropology, human prehistory is divided into three consecutive time periods, eachnamed after the main material used in its respective tool-making technologies: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age — technology then was really about the materials humans could develop into tools. (Actually it still is – only now it’s about Silicon-based or other materials made into chips that run our software and hardware or used to make sensors, devices and the internet – that give us the ability to connect everything to everything and generate all that data.) The figure below from Pitkochart does a nice job of showing how “tools” evolved over time…

And so the point is that what we see, as we traverse history is, that those man/machine partnerships have and are being taken to a new level. Today, for example service partnerships like Google and Apple Maps and WAZE help us to find our way. And in the future, those partnerships will be with self-driving cars, more advanced robots for manufacturing, anthropomorphic robots for companionship and game-play and much more helpful versions for housekeeping and other errands. At CES we’ll see semi-autonomous tools such as lane assist, self-parking and adaptive cruise control. And perhaps by 2020 the big car makers will have fully autonomous vehicles ready to go.

Sensors, Sensors, Sensors. And to power all of this? In part, sensors. A sensor is an object used to detect events or changes in its environment, which then provides a corresponding output. Depending on the type of sensor, it could have a electrical or optical signals. So to get the data, you need a sensor. If something can accommodate a sensor, it will have a sensor. If the sensor can be computerize it, it will be computerized. If the sensor would benefit from two-way communication, you’ll bet that will be something that will be included in its capabilities. These connections may also include dedicated systems for connected things with proprietary or standardized RFID, active RFID, real-time locations systems, mesh sensor networks, etc… But it will also be smart objects that will sense and communicate over the internet within human interaction. And it will also include internet-enabled personal electronics like cell phones, tablets and computers. The figure below from IDTechEx does a great job of breaking this down.

Screen Shot 2016-01-05 at 11.40.52 AM

So in short, CES 2016 is about everything that can be connected will be connected. It is about the Internet of Things #IOT connected. I just hope that we go that one step further, and not just rest on the ability to connect things to things, but we complete the circle and we clearly demonstrate the business value and the value to creating better customer experiences.

Creating an experience just because we can is not enough. Though I know we sometimes have to start there to develop the technology to get it to a place where it will benefit people and business. I just hope we don’t get lost in the mounds of data and forget what we were really aiming to do… which is to make better customer experiences… Because at the end of the day, the last variable for companies to compete on? Not product, not price, but experience. Customer experience is the deciding factor and the sooner executives really grasp the value of this, the sooner they will take the lead in their industry. And if not, as in Ray Wang’s book, Disrupting Digital Business, they will be become a statistic: since the year 2000, 50% of the Fortune 500 companies have been acquired, merged or gone completely out of business. It’s time to really understand why. The why? Customer experience. Period.

@DrNatalie

VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Covering Marketing, Sales and Customer Service and All things Connected to make better Customer Experiences through #IOT

Next-Generation Customer Experience Data to Decisions Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Tech Optimization Chief Customer Officer

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General Motors is Investing $500M in Lyft – Just The Beginning of the Sign Of Changes in 2016

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

The Digital Disruption Is Here. The digital disruption is showing up in a very traditional industry, the auto industry. How? General Motors, with the $500 million investment in Lyft, is creating a wider-ranging strategic partnership that will include a rental program for drivers of the car-sharing service and the creation of an on-demand autonomous car network. Lyft and GM began their talks about three months ago at the Los Angeles Auto Show according to John Zimmer, Lyft president and co-founder. The move is part of a larger effort to increase the company’s heft via a number of alliances, such as one with Didi, Ola Cabs and GrabTaxi, in what amounts to a global anti-Uber effort.

Why GM And the Lyft Partnership? Lyft added GM to its arsenal because according to Zimmer, “GM is the largest automaker in the U.S. We both see the future of transportation through a network versus ownership, and this is a step in that direction.” What’s most interesting is to note that GM is looking to the shift away from its main business until now — the sale of cars — to a more service-oriented one.

How Much Has Been Invested in Lyft? The investment is part of a larger funding round of $1 billion for Lyft, including a previously reported $100 million from Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Company. Other existing Lyft investors will also participate, including Janus Capital Management, Rakuten, Didi Kuaidi and Alibaba. Post-money, Lyft will now be valued at $5.5 billion, which is still a fraction of the $60 billion-plus valuation of its rival Uber. So far, the startup has raised $2 billion since its founding in 2013

According to GM president Dan Ammann, Even for GM, $500 million is a lot of money, but investing in different business models [is] going to be an important part of our future. The car industry is going to change more in the next five years than in the past 50, noting it was eventually moving away from ownership and toward a more software and service business.”

But now, Lyft has something Uber does not yet have — the significant backing of a major U.S. automaker. In May, Lyft did garner an investment from Bill Ford, executive chairman of the U.S. automaker, but it came from a personal venture fund.

What About Self-Driving Cars? The partnership also marks Lyft’s boldest declaration yet that it intends to operate with self-driving cars in the future. Uber is already plowing significant resources into its own autonomous driving research, but it looks like Lyft will outsource this technology to GM. Google, the leader in autonomous driving tech, has also held talks with multiple carmakers about partnerships, including, reportedly, a big one with Ford.

For GM, the investment puts it squarely at a major crossroads. The Detroit behemoth has already made a recent push toward ride-sharing and self-driving cars, but it has moved slower than German rivals Audi and Daimler. In October, GM said autonomous fleets of its electric Chevy Volts would be on the road in 2017.

Presumably, that will be part of the “Autonomous On-Demand Network” that GM and Lyft said they planned to create, noting they “will work to help make this integrated network of on-demand autonomous vehicles part of people’s daily lives.”

What Does This Mean for You? What that means is unclear as yet, with few details about when and where and how. More concretely and immediately, GM and Lyft said they will also offer “rental hubs,” allowing Lyft drivers to rent cars on a short-term basis. While neither Lyft nor GM would confirm whether the deal was exclusive, Amman noted that the partnership would require a “deep level of cooperation and integration.” Neither he nor Lyft president and co-founder John Zimmer would comment as to whether this was a prelude to an acquisition.

On the other hand, what it does mean is that a business that has traditionally been in the business of selling cars is now transitioning into a service business. Which is a true indicator of the power service-oriented economy. How is your business shifting? Is it standing still, doing the same things it’s always done or is it looking into the future at a new version of itself? Perhaps it’s time for some new years resolutions?

@DrNatalie, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Covering Marketing, Sales and Service in a Digitally Disrupted Business World

Next-Generation Customer Experience Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Future of Work AI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Analytics Automation B2B B2C CX EX Employee Experience HR HCM business Marketing Metaverse developer SaaS PaaS IaaS Supply Chain Quantum Computing Growth Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology eCommerce Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP Leadership finance Social Healthcare VR CCaaS UCaaS Customer Service Content Management Collaboration M&A Enterprise Service Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Operating Officer

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IBM Design Studio Austin - Site Visit

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

I finally got around to follow up on the invitation by IBM’s GM of Design, Phil Gilbert, to visit the campus in Austin, which hosts the nucleus of the IBM Design activities. Needless to say – it was an insightful visit. Here are some highlights:

The Austin Design Studio is where IBM’s quest to infuse more Design Thinking into its products began. The design center remains the core of the effort, though IBM has been opening more design centers across the globe – counting more than 30+ as of right now. And IBM keeps investing into these centers, with 11 of them becoming ‘flagship’ centers, a status that in 2015 only Austin holds.

The Space

Location and space is always a key decision to make for innovation and design centers, and IBM chose an unusual approach with opting to co-locate the design center into an existing IBM office and going to a ‘non-coastal’ location with Austin. A number of factors played a role to start in Austin, embedding the design center physically with a development office was a prominent factor and Gilbert did not want to create a satellite that could create a lot of ‘it can’t be done here’ syndrome. And Austin has a growing reputation in design cycles since quite a while, more importantly IBM sees no challenge to attract talent to the Austin locaton.

The Design Studio now occupies over 50k square feet on two stories and is expanding by another 25k square feet soon. A regular office building poses some challenges to create the wide open spaces with adjustable furniture as required by state of the art design centers, but the design center’s space architects found a way of working with Steelcase to allow for flexible, hanging partitioning walls. And the rest the design center does not differ from other places, with an emphasis on furniture on rollers, frugal means to create new furniture (for example Z-Bars with pipe plumbing to affix whiteboards) and the usual creative ‘hacks’ you find in design centers. And no surprises – designers in Austin gravitate towards the lounge setup as a working and review environment like their peers in Silicon Valley, Seattle, New York, LA and Potsdam (more site visits to come).

What is different in Austin is, that the key design teams for specific products are co-located on the floors, creating their own distinctive spaces. And while IBM ‘forward deploys’ designers into development locations, it maintains these core groups at design centers. It’s a sign for IBM’s outcome orientation when it comes to design, and likely a key contributing factor to the quick turnaround and immediate results in the usability of its products. At the same time IBM knows it has to collaborate across physical locations and time zones and it is good to see that designers are equipped with the necessary modern tools to make this happen.

Very tough to pick the top three takeaways – but here you go:

Pragmatic Approach – As mentioned above, IBM is pragmatic about using Design Thinking to move the bottom line regarding usability of its product. It’s pretty much a no-nonsense culture (saw a motto: ‘Don’t Ship Sh…!’) measured by product progress in usability. And the team’s charter is a focus on creating a global sustainable culture of design across the vendor.

Taking the approach of not limiting the physical design of its products through one common technical framework but opting for a ‘meta’ design language (learn more about it here) instead is a unique approach for almost all of the industry. Though sceptics thought a descriptive language would not be able to hold up uniformity of actual user interfaces, the proof of the contrary is by now in the famous ‘pudding’ – as the IBM products look more uniform across product families than ever.

Design Infiltration – It is relatively easy to establish a new innovation / design center with a substantial investment, the key measure of success is a lasting ‘lift’ in product usability and quality as well as the moving of the overall product development organization to a higher level of performance. Never an easy task to solve, it looks like IBM has achieved the right balance between central product design teams and embedded designers at the various development locations. At the same time IBM has an ambitious hiring goal (ultimately 1000 designers) and has been able to train them, bring them up to speed and achieve a level of consistency that matters for making products usable for the same users across product groups. Using an incubation program at the same time to train the new hires – while supervised by senior designers – and allowing product team to ‘test drive’ for a limited time the design center is a win / win move.

Beyond Designers – It certainly helps that Design Thinking and the design centers have support from the top at IBM, CEO Rometty is a driving force behind the design approach. It is no surprise that the only 2nd time the worldwide IBM leadership team has come together in the same place other than Armonk, has been in Austin. And IBM has a lot of design tradition, starting with former CEO Watson’s memo of ‘design is good business’. Rometty sees client experience as the key path to future growth for IBM.

Even more interestingly IBM is implementing lessons learnt and best practices across more IBM offices, not only briefing centers (as IBM calls customer visit centers) but also regular office. More configurable space, more furniture on rolls is supposed to create an overall more agile, dynamic, project oriented IBM going forward. The success of this massive change management endeavor will be interesting to watch going forward.

MyPOV

Always great to visit design centers, especially when they are successful and have moved the needle for their respective organization. It is fair to say that Design Thinking, the IBM design centers, starting with Austin and the designers have made a substantial difference to current IBM products. When mainframe engineers use Design Thinking for a zOS upgrade – you know IBM is onto something that works and transforms the way how the vendor builds its products. It is also very good to see that the core design team is not resting on its laurels, but actively working on re-thinking (pun intended) the way how IBM practices Design Thinking, stay tuned for more in 2016.

Overall a very promising state of Design Thinking at IBM, but changing the way to work, do business, and how products are imagined and built for a 380k+ employee organization and their customers takes time – and the next years will show how lasting the new approaches are. 2016 with the rollout and upgrade of more design centers will be a key year. We will be watching.

If interested in more 'Site Visit' blog posts - many remain confidential (unfortunately) - but this one with ADP is public.

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.

Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Data to Decisions Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite IBM Chief Customer Officer

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Blockchain: Linux Foundation Unites Industry Leaders to Advance Blockchain Technology

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

What’s the News?: The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced a new collaborative effort to advance the popular blockchain technology. The project will develop an enterprise grade, open source distributed ledger framework and free developers to focus on building robust, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support business transactions.

Who is Invovled?: Early commitments to this work come from Accenture, ANZ Bank, Cisco, CLS, Credits, Deutsche Börse, Digital Asset Holdings, DTCC, Fujitsu Limited, IC3, IBM, Intel, J.P. Morgan, London Stock Exchange Group, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), R3, State Street, SWIFT, VMware and Wells Fargo.

What is BlockChain?: Blockchain is a digital technology for recording and verifying transactions. The distributed ledger is a permanent, secure tool that makes it easier to create cost-efficient business networks without requiring a centralized point of control. With distributed ledgers, virtually anything of value can be tracked and traded. The application of this emerging technology is showing great promise in the enterprise. For example, it allows securities to be settled in minutes instead of days. It can be used to help companies manage the flow of goods and related payments or enable manufacturers to share production logs with OEMs and regulators to reduce product recalls.

Why Did the Founding Members Come Together?: To standardize the potential savings, use cases and ensure the orders come into the system and the code execution are standardized and to improve hardware. For supply chain and IOT and the financial industries, this is very important. Many of the founding members are already investing considerable research and development efforts exploring blockchain applications for industry. IBM intends to contribute tens of thousands of lines of its existing codebase and its corresponding intellectual property to this open source community. Digital Asset is contributing the Hyperledger mark, which will be used as the project name, as well as enterprise grade code and developer resources. R3 is contributing a new financial transaction architectural framework designed to specifically meet the requirements of its global bank members and other financial institutions. These technical contributions, among others from a variety of companies, will be reviewed in detail in the weeks ahead by the formation and Technical Steering Committees. This collaboration is expected to help identify and address important features and currently missing requirements for a cross-industry open standard for distributed ledgers that can transform the way business transactions are conducted around the world.

A note from the executive director at The Linux Foundation, Jim Zemlin: “Distributed ledgers are poised to transform a wide range of industries from banking and shipping to the Internet of Things, among others. As with any early-stage, highly-complex technology that demonstrates the ability to change the way we live our lives and conduct business, blockchain demands a cross-industry, open source collaboration to advance the technology for all.”

Many CFO are Interested. Why?” Distributed ledger systems today are being built in a variety of industries but to realize the promise of this emerging technology, an open source and collaborative development strategy that supports multiple players in multiple industries is required. This development can enable the adoption of blockchain technology at a pace and depth not achievable by any one company or industry. This type of shared or external Research & Development (R&D) has proven to deliver billions in economic value.

Who is Linux Foundation?” The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

My POV: Blockchain has the potential to change how we operate on a financial level. This comes with great responsibility and also great promise. But where there is promise, there is also risk. It will be very interesting to see how this group evolves and how standards are created and if it does do the transformative work it’s set to do. It’s always interesting when money is involved.

For more information about the project and how to participate in this work, please visit: https://blockchain.linuxfoundation.org/

@Drnatalie VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Covering Customer-Facing Applications, IOT and how Blockchain may change the future of our financial backbone

Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Innovation & Product-led Growth AI Blockchain Chief Customer Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer

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Top 5 Data-to-Decisions News Trends of 2015

Doug Henschen

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Doug Henschen is former Vice President and Principal Analyst where he focused on data-driven decision making. Henschen’s Data-to-Decisions research examines how organizations employ data analysis to reimagine their business models and gain a deeper understanding of their customers. Henschen's research acknowledges the fact that innovative applications of data analysis requires a multi-disciplinary approach starting with information and orchestration technologies, continuing through business intelligence, data-visualization, and analytics, and moving into NoSQL and big-data analysis, third-party data enrichment, and decision-management technologies. Insight-driven business models are of interest to the entire C-suite, but most particularly chief executive officers, chief digital officers,…...

Apache Spark, real-time, cloud BI & analytics, IoT, and self-service where the trends to watch in 2015, and they’ll continue to make waves into 2016.

It’s that time of year again. Here’s a look back on the big stories of 2015 and a look forward on the trends that will carry on into 2016.

1. Spark Lights A Fire. In 2015 companies and vendors started to realize that the opportunity with big data isn’t just to scale up BI and the data warehouse. Thus the Apache Spark open source framework and other analytical options that go beyond SQL were hot in 2015. Spark was embraced by scores of vendors and hundreds of big companies in 2015. IBM was the most visible vendor advocate, but plenty of other data-integration and big data platform companies joined the bandwagon.

It takes more than SQL to make sense of big data. Spark couples in-memory performance
with SQL, streaming, machine learning, graph and R-based data-analysis options.

A key driver of the interest in Spark’s ensemble of analytics – which encompasses SQL, R, graph analysis and machine learning — is the fact that in an increasingly digital world, companies are generating and need to analyze a variety of data types. As companies do more marketing and business online, for example, clickstreams, social data and mobile data become much more important. SQL is good for analyzing the transactional data behind those interactions, but graph, machine learning and other techniques shine with these new types of data. And companies want to look forward, not just back, so they can make the right moves to maximize sales and profits. That’s what is driving interest in predictive capabilities, such as those available in R.

2. Real-time gets real. Streaming data analysis (a.k.a., real-time data analysis) was another hot category in 2015. Recent announcements by Amazon, Cloudera, Confluent (the Kafka support company), Microsoft, MapR, SAP and plenty of others point to the demand for low-latency data capture and analysis capabilities. Online advertising, marketing and retail scenarios have been a big driver, as companies seek to trigger ads, launch campaigns, and serve up cross-sell and up-sell offers while customers are still online. Real-time fraud detection, risk analysis, IoT (see below) and security threat detection are other scenarios where time is of the essence. Look for the wave of real-time announcements to continue into 2016.

3. Cloud-based analytics and business intelligence options take off. Some vendors (like BIRST and BusinessObjects) were very early to cloud-based (Software-as-a-Service-style) business intelligence. But the first-generation of options that emerged seven to ten years ago didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Early pioneers including LudicEra, Oco and PivotLink didn’t survive.

This gauge of cloud-based data analysis versus on-premises-based data analysis, as measured
by Tableau Online, explains why cloud-based BI and analytics services are finally taking off. Tableau
says Amazon Redshift, Google Analytics, Google Big Query and Salesforce are the top-sources.

Times have changed. Now that huge volumes of data are originating and accumulating online (think Amazon RedShift, Google Analytics, Google BigQuery and Salesforce) cloud-based BI and analytics options are starting to take off. Vendors including IBM, GoodData, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP all upped their stakes in cloud-based BI in 2015 while upstarts Tableau and Qlik prepared to deliver deeper cloud services 2016. Stay tuned for yet more announcements in 2016 and check out these six tips for success in cloud-based data analysis.

4. IoT Services: Will they bear fruit? The question isn’t which vendor did but which didn’t introduce an IoT suite or IoT-related services portfolio in 2015? The list of players announcing new or expanded IoT capabilities in 2015 included IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce and SAP. (Others deeply invested prior to 2015 included General Electric, Cisco and Intel, among others.)

In my view, IoT is often a new marketing spin on analytics against sensor-based data – something in use in manufacturing and industrial settings for quite some time. Add in ingredients including geospatial data, automotive telematics, smart mobile devices and, of course, Internet-based apps and services, and you can give it a more modern “of things” twist.

The question for 2016 is how quickly will businesses adopt and prove out real-world, IoT-based used cases. Our deepest thinker on this topic, Andy Mulholland, points out that there’s a last-mile problem whereby the IT infrastructure and services are useless if you can’t make the final connections and make sense of the data streaming from the sensors and devices on the front lines. In Andy’s book, line-of-business people are crucial to IoT deployment success, and IT-centric suites and vendor portfolios won’t succeed without business leadership of IoT initiatives.

5. Self-service options proliferate. The trend toward self-service reporting and data analysis emerged five to seven years ago. Now that trend is moving into new areas, and it reached a fever pitch in self-service data prep in 2015, with announcements from data-integration vendors like Informatica , SnapLogic and Talend, and from BI vendors including Qlik (Smart Data Load) and Logi Analytics.

Self-service started in the BI realm with the likes of Qlik and Tableau. Vendors including Alteryx have
extended the trend to self-service data-prep and self-service advanced analytics for data-analyst types.

Interest in self-service advanced analytics is also on the rise. One of my most important reports of 2015 was “The Era of Self-Service Analytics Emerges,” which looked at leading examples including IBM Watson Analytics, SAP Lumira and SAS Visual Analytics/Visual Statistics. Other vendors and products pursuing this self-service advanced analytical trend include Alteryx, Microsoft Power BI, Qlik and Tableau.

Hope you enjoy the read on these trends as we head into 2016 and have a happy and healthy New Year!

Data to Decisions Marketing Transformation Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Digital Officer

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My New Book: Skills for the 21st Century – It’s Marketing But Not As We Know It

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

Gavin is the Founder of Disruptors Co, one of Australia’s leading independent strategy and innovation companies. Gavin advises firms on strategy, marketing, product development and innovation. He is also a member of the Orbits program, the influencer network of award winning analyst and advisory firm, Constellation Research. Gavin advises boards and leadership on innovation strategy, marketing, data-driven product development and corporate venturing. Gavin is on the board of Vibewire, a youth-led social enterprise based in Sydney, Australia and on the Technology Advisory Group for Good2Give – the workplace giving platform. ...

It is clear that the skills that brought us through the 20th Century have not prepared us for the next 100 years. Or even the next decade.

Technology, social media and consumerisation has disrupted industry after industry, and while marketing operates in most firms at the forefront of customer experience, many marketers feel out of their depth with the vast array of skills and capabilities that are required. The disruption adds to the anxiety that ripples out across the organisation.

Over the last year I have spoken at conferences and forums in Australia and internationally, consulted with organisations and governments and helped develop new capability roadmaps, skilling programs and events. And the challenges and fears are largely the same.

What I have found, is that this anxiety is reverberating far beyond the marketing department. In the 21st Century, we are all marketers, and we are unprepared for this new future.

In response, I have written an eBook that builds on a series of blog posts and articles, observations, projects and presentations that I have made throughout the year. It looks at the shifting landscape and suggests ways forward for individuals and teams.

This eBook is available for immediate download as a PDF.

Marketing Transformation Chief Marketing Officer

Read more about My New Book: Skills for the 21st Century – It’s Marketing But Not As We Know It

Box, Microsoft and Citrix Update Their Enterprise File Sharing Offerings

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

In today's File-sharing Friday news, oh wait, it's Wednesday. In today's Web-Content Wed news... ugh, never mind! Today was a busy news day in the enterprise file-sharing market with three stories:

Here is a short video with my thoughts on these 3 announcements.

Links mentioned in the video:

My Constellation colleague Chris Kanaracus has written more about the Box/Salesforce announcement here: Salesforce, Box Deepen Partnership: How It's Good for Customers

Future of Work Marketing Transformation Next-Generation Customer Experience Revenue & Growth Effectiveness box Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Revenue Officer

Read more about Box, Microsoft and Citrix Update Their Enterprise File Sharing Offerings

Slack Advances Their Efforts To Evolve From Product To Platform

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Today Slack made 3 announcements that help advance their efforts to evolve from just being a product to being a platform. This is very important, as you've heard me say over and over again, one of the key's to the success of any vendor is the strength of its partner ecosystem. The announcements are:

1. The Slack Fund, "a new $80 million dollar fund backed by Slack and six of our investors: Accel, Andreessen-Horowitz, Index Ventures, KPCB, Spark, and Social+Capital"

MyPOV: Developers have several options in the social business market. Should they spend their time building for Office365, Google for Work, Jive, Salesforce, etc? This fund should help motive developers to build applications and extensions that interact with Slack.

2. Botkit, "a new framework for Slack development that greatly simplifies the creation of apps (especially bots) with a flexible codebase that handles things like authenticating apps to a team and the sending, receiving, and processing of messages with our API"

MyPOV: This new framework should help developers who have been attracted by announcement #1 get started quickly. Removing the need to code the backend processes allows developers to focus on the business workflows of the applications.

3. New an improved Application Directory, "where you can find over 160 apps that can extend the capabilities of your Slack team"

MyPOV: Announcement #1 provides the incentive to build applications, announcement #2 helps developers do it, #3 is all about easily surfacing those new applications. The vast amount and variety of integrations available for Slack have been one its primary keys to success. Until now installing those integrations required a few steps and may have been too technical for some people. The new directory makes adding functionality to your Slack channels much easier, which will help drive adoption.

Here is a short video where I discuss today's news:

Are you currently using Slack? Are you planning to? Are you a developer building for Slack? Are you planning to?

I look forward to your feedback.

Future of Work

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IBM Announces IBM Connections 5.5 and IBM Docs 2.0

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

IBM has announced the latest versions IBM Connections and IBM Docs. These new versions are for on-premises customers who have not yet made the move to IBM Smart Cloud. While these are not innovative new releases, the do allow on-premises customers to catch-up on the features which IBM has been rolling out this year to their cloud-based offerings.

Future of Work

Read more about IBM Announces IBM Connections 5.5 and IBM Docs 2.0

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Capgemini Expands Its Digital Growth Strategy With The Acquisition of oinio, a Leading European Salesforce Partner

#IOT CES 2016: Expect Everything That Can Be Connected Will Be Connected

General Motors is Investing $500M in Lyft – Just The Beginning of the Sign Of Changes in 2016

IBM Design Studio Austin - Site Visit

The Space

MyPOV

Blockchain: Linux Foundation Unites Industry Leaders to Advance Blockchain Technology

Top 5 Data-to-Decisions News Trends of 2015

My New Book: Skills for the 21st Century – It’s Marketing But Not As We Know It

Box, Microsoft and Citrix Update Their Enterprise File Sharing Offerings

Slack Advances Their Efforts To Evolve From Product To Platform

IBM Announces IBM Connections 5.5 and IBM Docs 2.0